Mark Coatney has joined at least one Newsweek.com staffer in presenting a very cogent case for saving Newsweek.com on Tumblr.

But if you take a few step backs the decision is, if anything, even more depressing.

For one thing, it demonstrates a clear failure to understand the web. Tina Brown is a creature of print, not of the web; Ryan Tate, for one, has chronicled her difficulties making the transition from the former to the latter. In the world of print, as Coatney says, it&8217;s conceivable that you can take one magazine&8217;s readership and transfer it to anotherthink the way that Life&8217;s readers were steered to Time, or Gourmet&8217;s to Bon Appetit. But you can&8217;t do that online, for reasons which Coatney outlines well and which the new bosses at Newsweek don&8217;t seem to grok at all.

More generally, there&8217;s a clear and obvious move among online media companies towards creating coherent sites for clearly-defined audiences, rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all mush. AOL has lots of sites at lots of different domains, as does Gawker Media and even the New York Times and Washington Post companies. The Newsweek Daily Beast Company is coming into existence owning two valuable and major websites with clearly distinct audiences. There&8217;s almost certainly a strong case not to try to build a third, while Newsweek is still in turnaround mode. But equally it&8217;s idiotic to try to cut those two sites down to just one.

Tags: newsweek

 
 

Southwest Airlines Launches Craziest Sale Yet&bodyhttp://news.travel.aol.com/2011/06/21/southwest-airlines-launches-craziest-sale-yet/" title"Southwest Airlines Launches Craziest Sale Yet">Email This. Getty File.

Celebrating 40 Years With 40 Fares One-Way sale starts with prices at 40 for short haul flights (up to 450 miles), 80 for mid-range flights (451 to 1,250 miles) and 120 for flights longer than 1,251 miles (not including tax and fees).The sale is good for travel from August 23rd to November 16th, but travelers have to purchase tickets by 11:59 PDT on Thursday in order to take part in the sale, the Los Angeles Times reports.Blackout dates: September 1, September 5, September 6, and October 10. Fares not good on Fridays or Sundays.Meanwhile, Southwest's discount rival, JetBlue, canceled their famous “all you can jet” promotion for this year. JetBlue spokesman Bryan Baldwin told USA Today: “All You Can Jet was designed to get people talking about JetBlue in a fun way and also introduce new customers to the JetBlue experience to gain their loyalty and future business, and this program accomplished that in 2009 and 2010.” Oh well.Clearly, people are happy as clams about the Southwest sale, as I'm still waiting for the Southwest website to click through to see if I can get away for Labor Day. Oh, where to go? Where to go?More Articles You Might LikeDestin-Nation Argentina: No, We Won't Eat Vegetables! AOL TravelDestin-Nation Italy: Best Beaches Along the Mediterranean's Boot AOL TravelThe Secret Lost World of New York's Finger Lakes Gadling The Best Barbecue Joints for Cocktail Enthusiasts The Daily Meal Believe Your Eyes: The World's Strangest Optical Illusions and Mirages Lonely Planet36 Adorable Zoo Babies Born in 2011 Budget Travel Filed Under: Air Travel, NewsTags: southwest 40 years of luv Email This Add a Comment Sign in &187; Add a Comment Type your comment here 0 / 3000 Character Maximum Submit 2 2 Comments Filter by: Abcde Ummm this isn't news, just free advertising for Southwest.

Just curious, how much did Southwest pay to have this written?

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Tags: southwest airlines

 
 

Spending 315 million to buy the Huffington Post was a big deal for AOL, but, in terms of ongoing investment, Patch is a much bigger one. The hyperlocal news network is burning through 40 million a quarter — more than.

So it&8217;s pretty important that the needle be pointing in the right direction, and, at least on the traffic side, it is. According to ComScore, Patch&8217;s 800 sites attracted a collective audience of 6.9 million unique visitors in April. Now, that&8217;s not terribly impressive on a per-site basis, and it pales in comparison to Huffpo&8217;s audience of almost 30 million. But it&8217;s a big jump from where Patch started the year: It had just over 3 million uniques in December 2010 and just a hair under 4 million in January.

A Patch spokeswoman declined to comment, but it appears that some of the growth at Patch is organic and some is a result of the Huffpo integration: The biggest jump by far, of more than 2 million uniques, came in March, the month AOL and Huffpo fused. But the overall upward trend predates the merger and a more recent &8220;course correction&8221; that involved adding Huffpo-style bloggers to every site.

Of course, as Business Insider notes, Patch could triple its April traffic and still not make money unless it finds a way to charge super-premium CPMs or discovers other revenue streams. Still, to be able to say that at least one side of the equation is working is something.

Tags: traffic